The pursuit of Waldensians, though most intensive in mountainous regions, was by no means confined to them; and nor were witch-trials. In 1438 Pierre Vallin of La Tour du Pin was tried for witchcraft, and he was a vassal of the lord of Tournon: the whole area, which lies to the south and south-east of Lyons, is a mere 200 metres above sea level. The trial is of interest for two reasons: it shows how closely secular and ecclesiastical authorities collaborated in pursuing the newly invented' crime, and also why the new-style witch-trials tended to turn into mass trials. The trial took place in two stages: in the first, Pierre Vallin was prosecuted and sentenced by officers of the archbishop of Vienne and of the Inquisition; in the second, by the fiscal of the lord of Tournon.(6) Already at the first of the two trials the accused confessed that he had given himself to a demon called Belzebut, body and soul, no less than sixty-three years before; and regularly rode on a stick to the “synagogue”, or sabbat, where children were eaten. At the second trial the secular authorities were interested in extracting from the unfortunate man the names of accomplices, i.e. of fellow-witches who had also ridden on sticks to the sabbat. Pierre Vallin had already been tortured and had already, in effect, been sentenced to death; now he was tortured again to obtain this information. In the end he supplied some ten names. It is noteworthy that they were mostly names of men, and that the interrogators pressed him to name priests and clerics and nobles and rich men in particular. The time had not yet come when attendance at the sabbat would be practically confined to women, and to peasant women at that.
In 1453 and 1459 two sensational trials took place in northern France. In the first, at Evreux in Normandy, the accused was Guillaume Adeline, who was a noted doctor of theology and had formerly been a Professer at Paris; the judges consisted of an inquisitor and a representative of the bishop of Evreux.(7) It was alleged that a written compact with Satan had been found on Adeline’s person, binding him to preach sermons against the reality of the sabbat; with the result that judges had been discouraged from prosecuting frequenters of the sabbat, and the number of those frequenting it had increased accordingly. Adeline eventually confessed not only that he had indeed entered into such a compact with Satan, but that he himself had been in the habit of flying on a broomstick to the sabbat. He found there a demon called Monseigneur, who sometimes changed himself into a he-goat; whereupon Adeline would do him homage by kissing him under the tail. Those attending the sabbat were also required to renounce formally every aspect of the Christian faith. Perhaps because of his eminence, perhaps because he enjoyed the support of the University of Caen, Adeline was sentenced not to death but to perpetual imprisonment in a dungeon, on a diet of bread and water. After four years of this regime he was found dead in his cell, in an attitude of prayer.
The company to which Adeline is supposed to have belonged is referred to as the sect of Waldensian^ — but by that time the term was very generally used as a synonym for “witches”. Attendance at the sabbat or (as it is called here) the “synagogue” of “Waldensians” or witches is what mattered; malefcia are barely hinted at. The same applies to the most celebrated of fifteenth-century witchcraft-trials, the Vauderie of Arras, That affair also shows most vividly how a trial of a single individual, when conducted under the inquisitorial procedure by authorities who were convinced of the reality of the nocturnal flight and the sabbat, could launch a mass trial.(8)
In 1459 a hermit at Langres, before being burned as a witch, was forced by torture to name all whom he had seen at the sabbat. They included a young prostitute of Douai and an elderly painter and poet of Arras, hitherto noted for his poems in honour of the Virgin Mary. The matter was at once taken up by the inquisitor of Arras; but the leading part was soon taken over by two other Dominicans — Jean, titular bishop of Beirut, who was acting as suffragan for the absent bishop of Arras, and Jacques du Boys, who was both a doctor of laws and dean of the general chapter of the Dominican Order. Both the accused named further participants at the sabbat, who in turn were arrested and tortured until they implicated many more. At the insistence of du Boys and of the bishop of Beirut, burnings began. These two insisted that anyone opposing the burnings must himself be a witch, and that anyone who dared to assist the prisoners should be burned also. In their view, Christendom was full of witches — many bishops and cardinals and, indeed, a full third of nominal Christians were secret witches. Before the burnings the inquisitor preached a sermon and read a description of the sabbat. Asked if the description was true, all the prisoners assented; but when the inquisitor went on to abandon them to the secular arm for burning, they shrieked out that they had been cruelly deceived. They had been promised that, if they would confess, a short pilgrimage would be their only penance; they would be burned only if they persisted in denial. As the flames rose around them they continued to cry that they had never been to the Vauderie, that the confessions had been extracted by torture and by false promises.
Arrests continued, and they began to involve some of the richest citizens of Arras. Terror reigned in the city, for nobody could be sure that his turn might not come next. The economy of Arras was also adversely affected; a great manufacturing city, it suffered as its merchants lost their credit. In the end the evidence of the trials was laid before the duke of Burgundy at Brussels, who in turn took counsel of a great assembly of clerks, including the doctors of Louvain. The reality of the sabbat was debated, but no conclusion was reached. The duke thereupon took a severely practical decision: he sent his herald to be present at all examinations. The arrests stopped at once, although the lists of accused were by no means exhausted. Four trials were still pending, and the inconsistency of the sentences reflects the confusion which by this time was prevailing in the minds of the judges; for one trial resulted in a burning, another in what was in effect a life sentence, and two simply in fines — enormous fines, admittedly, paid partly to the Inquisition and partly to the various secular officials. In vain the bishop of Beirut and Jacques du Boys urged the inquisitors to continue the persecution — the inquisitors refused. Moreover they showed by their behaviour that they themselves no longer believed in the sabbat-stories. One woman, after repeated torture, had confessed to attending the sabbat and had duly been sentenced to be burned along with the whole of the first batch; but her heretic’s mitre had not been ready, her execution had been postponed, and now, with the change of policy, she was merely banished from the diocese and ordered to make a short pilgrimage.
This was not the end of the matter. One of those arrested was the Chevalier Payen de Beaufort, an old man and head of one of the richest families in the province of Artois. He at once appealed to the parlement of Paris; and though his appeal was disregarded and suppressed, he had sons who were able to pursue the matter. By this time the persecution was in any case practically at an end; and it proved possible to remove de Beaufort and other prisoners from Arras to the Conciergerie in Paris. It was the beginning of a legal investigation in which, for the first time, both sides could be given a hearing. The prime mover in the whole affair, Jacques du Boys, promptly went mad, and died within the year. As for the investigation itself, it was pursued with all the procrastination for which the parlement was celebrated, and lasted some thirty years. In 1491, when almost all those concerned were dead, a decree was read with great pomp at the very spot in Arras where the sentences had been pronounced. The accused and condemned were formally rehabilitated, while those of their persecutors who were still alive were fined; part of the sum to be spent on founding a mass for the souls of the victims, and erecting a cross on the spot where they had been burned. Anyone who believes in the reality of the sabbat — whether persuaded by Montague Summers or by Margaret Murray — would do well to consider the verdict passed by the parlement of Paris and publicly proclaimed, and acclaimed, at Arras.